boilingspot: consumerism

In a bold online video, the environmental group Greenpeace cleverly links candy-giant Nestle to oil palm-related deforestation and the deaths of orangutans. Clearly angered over the video, Nestle struck back by having it banned from YouTube and replaced with this statement: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Société des Produits Nestlé S.A."

However Nestle's reaction to the video only spread it far and wide (see the ad below): social network sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit were all flooded with the ad as well as rising criticism against Nestle—one of the world's largest food producers—including calls for boycotts.

Greenpeace began sustained action against Nestle on Wednesday when they released new evidence that linked Nestle to illegal deforestation in Indonesia through one of its palm oil suppliers, Sinar Mas.

Oil palm plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia. While palm oil plantations may look 'green' studies have shown a drastic reduction in biodiversity and large carbon emissions due to deforestation.

"While many companies such as Unilever and Kraft are making efforts to disassociate themselves from the worst practices of the palm oil industry, Nestlé has done diddly squat," the organization wrote in a blog.

The report spurred Nestle to cancel its contract with Sinar Mas—months after Sinar Mas was shown to be involved in illegal deforestation—but the corporation continues to purchase oil palm from Cargill, which is supplied in part by Sinar Mas. For its part, Cargill says it is investigating Greenpeace's allegations and if Sinar Mas is found to be committing illegal deforestation they will drop them. Nestle has said in a statement: "we share the deep concern about the serious environmental threat to rain forests and peat fields in South East Asia caused by the planting of palm oil plantations."

To prove this to its consumers, the company says it is committed to purchasing only sustainable palm oil by 2015. However, critics contend this is too late.

"Not only are these areas key habitat for orangutans, but also crucial carbon stores; the destruction of these areas is a major cause of Indonesia's rocketing carbon emissions,” Greenpeace said in a statement. .

Indonesia is the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases largely due to large-scale deforestation across the nation. Between 1990 and 2005, Indonesia lost more than 28 million hectares of forest, including 21.7 hectares of virgin forest. The country has declined from 82 percent forest cover in the 1960s to less than half today.

Orphaned orangutan, of which there are thousands, at Sepilok in Sabah, Malaysia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.

Deforestation is also the leading cause of biodiversity loss in the region. While orangutans have come to represent the movement against deforestation by oil palm plantations in the same way that polar bears symbolize climate change, Indonesia is home to tens of thousands of other species, many of which are threatened by deforestation.

Since Wednesday Nestle's Facebook page has been hit by growing anger against the multi-billion dollar food giant. Nestle complained that some Facebook users were posting new images of its logo, which shows three happy birds in a tree, and stated that it will delete any "altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic". This statement brought another firestorm of criticism, which Nestle has eventually caved to, now allowing 'alterations'.

This is not the first time Nestle has been called out for its practices. The company has long-faced criticism for aggressively marketing its baby formula to poor mothers in the developing world.

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

Copyright mongabay 2010

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09 March 2010

US still responsible for most CO2 emissions

Europeans import nearly twice as much carbon dioxide per head as US citizens – but the US still holds the dubious distinction of being the world's largest emitter

by Phil McKenna | New Scientist | 08 March 2010

The Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, reports that in 2004 23 per cent of global CO₂ emissions – some 6.2 gigatonnes – went in making products that were traded internationally. Most of these products were exported from China and other relatively poor countries to consumers in richer countries. Some countries, such as Switzerland, "outsourced" over half of their carbon dioxide emissions in this way because they have a high import-to-export ratio of such energy-intensive goods as consumer electronics, motor vehicles and machinery.

The average European is responsible for adding more than 4 tonnes of CO₂ to the atmosphere in the manufacture of goods imported from other countries. For people in the US, the figure was nearly half that – 2.5 tonnes – thanks to US exports of emissions-intensive goods that offset much of the C0₂ it imports.

The Carnegie study is one of the most comprehensive to date of a growing number that track emissions based on where goods are consumed. National inventories such as those conducted annually by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change currently consider emissions produced in each country's own territory only.

Lifestyle emissions

"If we want to understand our footprint of emissions, we have to understand that others are emitting on our behalf to make our goods and services," says study co-author Ken Caldeira. "The US and Europe are responsible for a bigger percentage of emissions, because it is emissions that go into the production of goods coming out of China that are supporting our lifestyle."

The study draws on detailed economic data from the Global Trade Analysis Project based at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, which takes into account the CO₂ emissions intensity of manufacturing in different countries and different sectors of the economy.

Another study, which Glen Peters of Norway's Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo is to publish soon, uses similar trade data to analyse consumption-based emissions up to 2008 and also tracks how the global movement of CO₂ emissions has changed since 1990.

Based on Peters's findings, the US still leads the world in CO₂ emissions because although US exports offset some of its territorial emissions, taken as a whole it is still emits the most. "China surpassed the US around 2006 in terms of territorial emissions, but in terms of consumption, you'll find that the US is still the biggest emitter," he says.

Taking all 2008 imports and exports into account, US emissions increase by about 10 per cent compared with territorial emissions and China's emissions decrease by about 20 per cent for the same year, Peters says.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0906974107

© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

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Consumption habits cause rich countries to outsource emissions

Over a third of the carbon emissions related to the consumption of goods in wealthy nations actually occur in developing countries, according to a new analysis by researchers with the Carnegie Institution. Annually, each person if the United States outsources 2.5 tons of carbon due to consumption habits, most frequently in China. In Europe the figure of 'outsourced' emissions rises to 4 tons per person

Jeremy Hance | mongabay.com | March 08, 2010

"Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume," co-author Ken Caldeira said in a press release. Caldeira is a researcher in the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.

Using trade data from 2004, researchers created a global model of the movement of products in 57 industries and across 113 countries and regions. Carbon emissions were then calculated as "imported" or "exported" by acting countries.

"Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China," says lead author Steven Davis of Carnegie Institution. "On the flip side, nearly a quarter of the emissions produced in China are ultimately exported."

In total the researchers found that the United States outsources 11 percent of its total emissions to developing countries, while Japan outsources nearly 18 percent. European nations outsource even more of their emissions: from 20-50 percent. Some small wealthy nations, such as Switzerland, outsource over half of their total emissions.

"Where CO2 emissions occur doesn't matter to the climate system," says Davis. "Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries' emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise."

The researchers do not make policy recommendations given their analysis, but they write that "it is intuitive that individuals who benefit from a process should bear some responsibility for the associated emissions. Yet, national inventories such as those conducted annually by parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change account for only those emissions produced within sovereign territories, ignoring the benefit conveyed to consumers through international trade."

China is by far the largest "exporter" of carbon dioxide emissions, as seen in this map of the net flow of emissions embodied in trade among the major exporting and importing countries. Arrows indicate direction and magnitude of flow; numbers are megatons (millions of tons). Credit: Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science.

The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Citation: Steven J. Davis and Ken Caldeira. Consumption-based accounting of CO2 Emissions. PNAS. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0906974107.

Copyright mongabay 2010

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03 March 2010

Advertising Is a “Serious Health Threat”—to the Environment

Climate change has brought the global environmental crisis to its crux. The primary point that must be noted is that the pace of climate change is accelerating much more rapidly than had been forecast. And to that must be added the all-too-little-studied amplifying factors that today pose the risk of a qualitative leap in the greenhouse effect leading to runaway global warming

Michael Löwy | Monthly Review | Volume 61, Number 8

Climate change has brought the global environmental crisis to its crux. The primary point that must be noted is that the pace of climate change is accelerating much more rapidly than had been forecast. Accumulation of carbon dioxide, rising temperatures, melting of the polar ice caps and of the “eternal snows,” droughts, floods: all are speeding up and previous scientific analyses, the ink scarcely dry, turn out to have been too optimistic. More and more, in projections for the next one, two, or three decades, the highest estimates are becoming accepted minima. And to that must be added the all-too-little-studied amplifying factors that today pose the risk of a qualitative leap in the greenhouse effect leading to runaway global warming.

There are still some 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide confined in the permafrost, that frozen tundra that extends through Canada and Siberia. But how can the glaciers melt without the permafrost melting too? There are few depictions of the worst-case scenario, in which global temperatures rise by 5-6°C: scientists steer clear of painting catastrophic pictures. But we already know what looms: rising sea levels flooding, not only Dacca and other Asian coastal cities, but also London, Amsterdam, Venice, New York; desertification on an enormous scale; shortages of drinking water; repeated natural catastrophes. The list goes on. At a temperature 6°C higher, it becomes questionable whether the planet will still be habitable for our species. We have, alas, no other planet to move to.

Who is responsible for this situation, unheard of in human history? Scientists answer—humans. A true answer, but a bit incomplete. Humans have lived on earth for many millennia, but atmospheric carbon dioxide levels became dangerous only a few decades ago. In reality, the fault lies with the capitalist system—its absurd and irrational logic of unlimited expansion and capital accumulation; its obsessive drive to increase material production in pursuit of profits.

The narrow-minded rationality of the capitalist market, with its short-term calculus of profit and loss, is intrinsically contradictory to the rationality of the living environment, which operates in terms of long, natural cycles. It is not that “bad” ecocidal capitalists stand in the way of “good” green capitalists. It is the system itself, based on pitiless competition, demand for return on investment, and the search for quick profits that is the destroyer of ecological equilibrium.

In contradistinction to the fetishism of commodity production and the automatically self-adjusting economy propounded by neoliberal economics, what is at stake is the emergence of a “moral economics”—economic policies based on non-monetary and extra-economic criteria, as suggested by E.P. Thompson: in other words, the reintegration of economics into its environmental, social, and political integument. Partial reforms are totally insufficient. What is needed is to replace the micro-rationality of the profitability criterion with an environmental and social macro-rationality, which means that civilization will have to operate according to a different paradigm. This is impossible without a thoroughgoing transformation of technology aimed at replacement of current energy sources by non-polluting and renewable sources such as direct-solar and wind energy. The first question demanding an answer is, therefore, that of control over the means of production and, above all, over decisions on investment and choice of technologies, which must be seized from banks and other corporations, and made a function of the common good.

Of course, radical change involves consumption as well as production. Nevertheless, the problem of industrial capitalist civilization is not—as is often claimed by some environmentalists—“excessive consumption” by the masses, and the solution is not a general “limitation” of consumption, not even in the advanced capitalist countries. The problem is the prevailing type of consumption based on “false needs”: display, waste, fetishism of commodities. What is needed is production aimed at the satisfaction of genuine needs, beginning with those that might be called “biblical”: food, water, shelter, garments.

How can these real needs be distinguished from their artificial and meretricious counterparts? By the fact that the latter are produced by the system of mental manipulation called “advertising.” Contrary to the claim of free-market ideology, supply is not a response to demand. Capitalist firms usually create the demand for their products by various marketing techniques, advertising tricks, and planned obsolescence. Advertising plays an essential role in the production of consumerist demand by inventing false “needs” and by stimulating the formation of compulsive consumption habits, totally violating the conditions for maintenance of planetary ecological equilibrium. The criterion by which an authentic need is to be distinguished from an artificial one is whether it can be expected to persist without the benefit of advertising. How long would the consumption of Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola go on, if the persistent advertising campaigns for those products were terminated? Such examples could be indefinitely multiplied.

“Of course,” pessimists will reply, “but individuals are motivated by an infinity of desires and aspirations, and it is they that will have to be controlled and repressed.” Well, the hope for a paradigmatic change in civilization is indeed based on a wager, as propounded by Karl Marx, that, in a society freed from capitalism, “being” will be valued over “having”: that personal fulfillment will be achieved through cultural, athletic, erotic, political, artistic, and playful activities, rather than through the unlimited accumulation of property and of products. The sort of accumulation induced by the fetishistic consumption inherent in the capitalist system, by the dominant ideology, and by advertising—and having nothing to do with some “eternal human nature.”

As capitalism, especially in its current neoliberal and globalized form, seeks to commodify the world, to transform everything existing—earth, water, air, living creatures, the human body, human relationships, love, religion—into commodities, so advertising aims to sell those commodities by forcing living individuals to serve the commercial necessities of capital. Both capitalism as a whole and advertising as a key mechanism of its rule involve fetishization of consumption, the reduction of all values to cash, the unlimited accumulation of goods and of capital, and the mercantile culture of the “consumer society.” The sorts of rationality involved in the advertising system and the capitalist system are intimately linked, and both are intrinsically perverse.

Advertising pollutes the mental, just like the urban and rural, landscape; it stuffs the skull like it stuffs the mailbox. It holds sway over press, cinema, television, radio. Nothing escapes its decomposing influence: in our time we see that sports, religion, culture, journalism, literature, and politics are ruled by advertising. All are pervaded by advertising’s attitude, its style, its methods, its mode of argument. Meanwhile, we are always and uninterruptedly harassed by advertising: without stop, without truce, unrelentingly and never taking a vacation, advertising persecutes us, pursues us, attacks us in city and countryside, in the street and at home, from morning to evening, from Monday to Sunday, from January to December, from the cradle to the grave.

Yet this advertising is nothing but a tool, an instrument of capital used to dispose of its output, to unload its shoddy goods, to make its investments pay, to expand its profit margins, and to win “sectors of the market.” Advertising does not exist in a vacuum: it is an essential part, a crucial gear in the capitalist system of production and consumption. Without capitalism advertising would have no reason to exist: it could not persist into a post-capitalist society for even an instant. And, inversely, capitalism without advertising would be like a machine with sand in its gears.

Let us add, in passing, that while advertising did not exist in the countries whose bureaucratically planned economies vanished after the Berlin Wall fell, there was a mendacious political propaganda that was no less inhuman and repressive. That too must be avoided in any transition to a post-capitalist society.

Still, today's omnipresent commercial advertising is inextricably intertwined with capitalism. It is capitalist corporations that design, finance, and profit from advertising campaigns, and that “sponsor”—that is to say pollute via advertising—newspapers, television, athletic competitions, and cultural events. Advertising plays the role of tub-thumper, pimp, and zealous servant for the interests of capital: our aim, explained the chief executive of TF1 (the leading French commercial TV chain), is to be selling Coca-Cola during all the time our viewers’ brains are at our disposal. Capitalism and advertising, inseparably intertwined, are the authors and active promoters of the commodification of the world, of the commercialization of social relations, of the monetization of the soul.

What, then, is advertising’s impact on the environment? “Alliance for the Planet” is rightly upset by advertising’s use of fraudulent “environmentalist” arguments to greenwash everything: nuclear power stations, genetically modified organisms, automobiles, and soon—why not?—road haulage. For opponents of advertising, this is not exactly news: we have long known that advertising lies as naturally as it breathes. Not because of deficient morality among those gentlemen advertisers, but because of the intrinsically perverse nature of the advertising system. Mystification and manipulation of consciousness are, alas, the sole justification for its existence: advertising that does not lie is an animal as hard to find as a vegetarian crocodile. As to the Bureau for Truthfulness in Advertising, consisting entirely of representatives from advertising corporations, its credibility and effectiveness are about that of a Bureau for Safe Henhouses consisting entirely of worthy delegates from the Brotherhood of Foxes. Nevertheless, phony green advertising is but the tip of the iceberg. It is for more fundamental, structural reasons that the advertising machine is a dangerous enemy of the environment. Here are two such reasons:

1. Advertising is an immense, fearsome waste of our planet’s limited resources. In France alone, advertising expenditures amount to several tens of billions of euros, more than the state budget of many African countries. With such a sum, it would be possible to build thousands of child-care centers, hospitals, schools, and homes, to begin solving the unemployment problem, to give large-scale aid to the third world. How many millions of acres of forest are cut down in the world every year to print the ever-increasing mass of advertising brochures cluttering our mailboxes, or to make billboards and posters covering the walls of our streets and hiding our countryside? How many hundreds of millions of kilowatt hours are expended each year by the neon advertisements “embellishing” our cities, from Shanghai to New York, (not forgetting Paris)? How many tons of garbage left behind by this activity? How many millions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted to supply the energy needs of the advertising circus? And so on. The damages, though hard to calculate, are undoubtedly gigantic. And what purpose does this enormous waste serve? To convince the public that detergent X washes whiter than detergent Y. Makes sense? Of course not, but it’s profitable (for advertisers). If you’re looking for a sector of the economy that is useless, that could easily be eliminated without any harm to the populace, while saving great outlays on energy and raw materials—what better example than the advertising industry? Certainly, that would involve laying off very many people but, rather than condemning them to unemployment, they could usefully be hired for new “green” jobs.

2. All environmentalists agree in denouncing the “consumerism” of the Western (i.e., advanced capitalist) countries as one of the main causes of the ecological disaster threatening us. But they don’t know how to alter that state of things: by making buyers feel guilty? By speeches preaching frugality? By willingly making one’s own life an example of austerity? All are legitimate activities, but they have a very limited impact on the larger public and even run the risk, in certain cases, of making people less willing to comply with environmental requirements. A change in consumption habits will not be accomplished in a day: it is a social process that will take years. It cannot be imposed from on high, nor can it be left merely to the virtuous “good will” of private individuals. It involves a true political battle in which active education by the public authorities must play a role. But the main agents of change will be education and struggles by consumer associations, trade unions, environmental movements, and—why not?—political parties. One of the crucial fronts in this battle is the fight for a complete and definitive suppression of advertising imperialism, that gigantic undertaking to colonize our minds and our behaviors, whose terrible effectiveness cannot be overestimated.

As we have seen, advertising is one of the main factors responsible for the obsessive consumption of modern societies; of the ever more irrational tendency toward piling up (usually useless) material goods; in short: of a perfectly unsustainable consumption paradigm. Compulsive consumption is one of the essential driving forces for the process of expansion and unlimited “growth” that have always characterized modern capitalism and now are driving us, with ever-increasing speed, toward the abyss of global heating. It is thus not by chance that the publishers of one of the most inventive “adverphobic” magazines in recent years, Adbusters, have also started the environmentalist magazine Objecteurs der Croissance (“Growth-conscientious Objectors”): advertising harassment and unlimited growth are two inseparable dimensions of the system, two teats from which capital accumulation feeds. It follows that transformation of the current consumption paradigm is closely linked to struggle against the tentacles of advertising. How can people be convinced to abandon consumption-habits incompatible with ecological equilibrium without putting a stop to the continuous pounding by advertising that incites, encourages, and stimulates them night and day to buy and buy again? How can individuals shake off the culture of conspicuous consumption—famously studied at the turn of the century by the American economist Thorstein Veblen—that tells them they can affirm their personality only by buying and displaying supposedly “exclusive” products; except by freeing them from the advertising that incessantly reproduces this reified culture? How can the public be freed from the dictatorship of “fashion” that forces the speedy obsolescence of products, themselves ever more ephemeral, without taking on the head-stuffing—if not brainwashing—of advertising? How can we put an end to the tyranny of “brands,” the neurotic obsession with “Logos,” without breaking up advertising’s frightful Ubuesque “brainectomy” machine?

The compulsive consumerist behavior in advanced capitalist society is not the manifestation of “human nature,” nor of some innate tendency of individuals to consume more and ever more. Nothing comparable is ever found in pre-capitalist communities or societies; it is proper to capitalist modernity and inseparable from the dominant fetishistic ideology, from the religious cult of commodity-worship actively promoted by the advertising system. And what that manufactures is not merely the desire to acquire this or that product—it is a culture, a worldview, habits, behaviors. In short, a whole way of life.

Rather than seeking to force individuals to “lower their standard of living,” or to “reduce their consumption”—an abstract, merely quantitative approach—what is needed is to create conditions under which people can, little by little, discover their real needs and qualitatively change their ways of consumption; for example, by choosing more culture, education, health, or home improvement rather than buying new gadgets, new decreasingly useful commodities. For this, the suppression of harassment by advertising is a necessary condition.

Of course, this is still not sufficient. For example, consider the iconic commodity of so-called “Fordist” capitalism, the private automobile, whose harmfulness to the general environment—by air pollution, paving over green spaces, and above all forcing climate change through carbon dioxide emissions—needs no demonstration. Steady reduction of its place in our cities—to be democratically decided by the public itself—can successfully be brought about only if, in parallel with the suppression of the persistent and mendacious advertising for automobiles, urban planning strongly favors alternative means of transport: mass transit, bicycles, pedestrianism.

Advertising is an essential gearing in the infernal neoliberal/capitalist spiral of ever-increasing, ever-expanding (“Expansion” is the title of a prestigious corporate business magazine) production/consumption/accumulation—that spiral that is driving the degradation, increasing at a geometric rate, of the environment—degradation that leads us, by means of climate change, to a catastrophe without precedent in human history. Advertising can even be viewed as the oil lubricating those terribly efficacious gears that are crushing the planet and might well, in a few decades, render it uninhabitable for humans.

The moral of the story is this: a different world is possible, beyond capitalist reification, commodity fetishism, and advertising. But we cannot wait for it to arrive: the struggle for a different future begins here and now. Every attempt to put limits to advertising’s aggression—until we are able, one day, to get rid of it altogether—is an environmental duty, a political and moral imperative for all those who hope to save our natural environment from destruction. The fight for a different civilizational paradigm is to be waged precisely through that sort of initiative. We fight, henceforward, to rein back advertising’s frenzy, in the same way that anti-capitalists mobilize for measures—the Tobin Tax, for example—that would apply the brakes to the unlimited covetousness of capital. Each success, even if limited, if won through collective action, is a step in the right direction and, above all, an advance in the acquisition of consciousness and self-organization of the people—the main condition for total transcendence of the system.

All material © copyright 1949–2010 Monthly Review

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21 February 2010

Green activists are losing their fire

Today's environmental pressure groups tend to be pusillanimous, policy-wonking and petrified, says Geoffrey Lean

By Geoffrey Lean | Telegraph.co.uk | 19 Feb 2010

Easy does it: environment pressure groups have become part of today’s establishment rather than insurgent campaigner

If those whom the gods love really do die young, then the deities must surely be green. For the two best, boldest and most effective environmental campaigners I have known departed decades before their time. Andrew Lees and Phil Clapp had a tremendous impact during their tragically truncated lives. And both – one British, one American; one prickly, one urbane; one scruffy, one smart – embodied something sadly lacking in today's pressure groups, which tend to be pusillanimous, policy-wonking and frequently petrified, in both senses of the word.

I was reminded of Lees this week when a vivid collection of personal testimonies by the Antanosy people from south-east Madagascar – of all things – landed on my desk. Lees collapsed and died, aged 45, probably from heat stroke, on New Year's Eve 15 years ago, while filming wildlife on their land. He was collecting evidence to fight plans by a subsidiary of Rio Tinto Zinc to mine there for ilmenite – a mineral used, among other things, to whiten toothpaste.

The mine has now been running for nearly five years and the testimonies – collected by the Andrew Lees Trust, established in his name – movingly describe its impact on the people's lives and sacred forests.

I had first come across Lees a good decade before, and half a world away, in the Norfolk Broads. Spurred by some unknown instinct, he had become almost obsessively interested in an obscure patch of wildlife-rich land called Halvergate Marshes. Suddenly, it became the test case for the effectiveness of the Government's conservation policies, as local farmers sought to "improve" it for agriculture.

Lees ensured that it got national attention – by whatever means necessary. When an environment minister visited to find out what was going on, Lees was refused a meeting: so he hid in a ditch for hours, leaping out like a gumbooted naiad on the great man's arrival. The minister listened, the marsh was saved and national policy changed.

Lees eventually became campaigns director for Friends of the Earth, but – never one for such an increasingly bureaucratic outfit – was becoming estranged from it when he died. By contrast, Phil Clapp – who died 18 months ago of a sudden illness, aged 54 – was an insider, completely at home in Congressional corridors, international climate negotiations, or often arcane pressure-group politics. Always immaculately dressed, this gossip-loving, coffee-addicted, Buddhist Anglophile was a dapper thorn in the flesh of politicians as different as George W Bush and Al Gore, whom he would chastise for failing to implement his green principles while in power.

Perhaps his finest moment came when the Bush administration rejected a compromise during a vital climate meeting in Montreal, saying: "If it looks like a duck, it's still a duck." Clapp bought every yellow plastic duck in the city and started handing them out. Soon they were everywhere – peeking out of ministers' breast pockets, cascading out of opened briefcases, even floating in the loos. The US was laughed back to the table.

Both Lees and Clapp had guts, as well as humour, and it's hard to find much of either quality in today's pressure groups. It's true that these may not have found much to laugh about in the climate rows of the past three months, but their almost complete silence speaks volumes about their lack of courage.

Greenpeace's executive director, John Sauven, wrote a newspaper article this week calling for "fight" and "leadership" over climate, but his organisation has shown precious little of either. Indeed, two of his top aides have separately told me that the group is "keeping its head down" to avoid Right-wing US politicians capitalising on its involvement. This illustrates the problem precisely. Green groups got obsessed with policy and politicians, and complacent about public opinion, which they took for granted. They became part of the establishment, and let the sceptics take over their former role as insurgents. And they now cannot get their act together to respond.

Yet the gutlessness goes deeper. I have been told by a senior figure at Friends of the Earth that the group should only undertake campaigns where it already has public support. During the 2000 fuel price protests environmentalists ran for cover, losing the argument for green taxes in the process. Shamed, they swore they would never be so cowardly again; but just look at them now.

It's all about the bottom line. Raising funds has become their most important cause; the planet comes a distant second. I have never joined a green pressure group, and never intend to do so – but if I had, I would refuse to pay my subscription until it had regained the calling, courage and sheer cussedness of Lees and Clapp.

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010

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13 February 2010

Big cities and global farming now driving deforestation, study finds

Environmentalresearchweb, part of the Guardian Environment Network | guardian.co.uk | Thursday 11 February 2010

The drivers of tropical deforestation have shifted in the early 21st century to hinge on growth of cities and the globalised agricultural trade, a new large-scale study concludes. The observations starkly reverse assumptions by some scientists that fast-growing urbanization and the efficiencies of global trade might eventually slow or reverse tropical deforestation. The study, which covers most of the world's tropical land area, appears in this week's early edition of the journal Nature Geoscience.

Forests in Brazil have been cut down to make way for crops such as soya. Photographer: Rodrigo Baleia/Greenpeace

Deforestation has been a rising concern in recent decades, especially with the recognition that it may exacerbate climate change. Studies in the late 20th century generally matched it with growing rural populations, as new roads were built into forests and land was cleared for subsistence agriculture. Since then, rural dwellers have been flooding into cities, seeking better living standards; 2009 was recorded as the first year in history when half of human lived in urban areas. Large industrial farms have, in turn, taken over rural areas and expanded further into remaining forests, in order to supply both domestic urban populations and growing international agricultural markets, the study suggests.

"The main drivers of tropical deforestation have shifted from small-scale landholders to domestic and international markets that are distant from the forests," said lead author Ruth DeFries, a professor at the Earth Institute's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation. "One line of thinking was that concentrating people in cities would leave a lot more room for nature. But those people in cities and the rest of the world need to be fed. That creates a demand for industrial-scale clearing."

DeFries and her colleagues analyzed remote-sensing images of forest cover across 41 nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia from 2000–2005, and combined these with population and economic trends. They showed that the highest forest losses were correlated with two factors: urban growth within countries; and, mainly in Asia, growth of agricultural exports to other countries. Rural population growth was not related.

In recent years, tropical countries have been supplying growing amounts of palm oil, soybeans, sugar, meat and other processed products to distant markets abroad. Not all the products are used for food; palm oil and sugar in particular are also being converted into biofuels. Furthermore, said DeFries, as small farmers within tropical nations move away to become city dwellers, they may actually use more resources from the countryside, not less. This is because those living in cities have higher incomes-the reason most moved there to begin with – and thus tend to consume more processed foods and animal products. Pastures needed to produce meat, and large plantations and other facilities that turn out other products, in turn, require land. "Collectively, these results indicate a shift from state-run road building and colonization in the 1970s and 1980s to enterprise-driven deforestation," says the study.

Hot spots of industrial-scale clearing include Brazil, Indonesia and Cambodia – countries that, unlike many others, still have considerable forests left to clear. The trend has not reached some forested parts of Latin America, such as Surinam or Guyana, which also have large tracts of remaining forest. Almost 60% of remaining forests occur in areas where net agricultural trade, percent of products exported, and urban growth are all relatively low. But as demand for products grows, these areas are likely to see increased pressure, the study says. According to projections by the United Nations, nearly all population growth in the next 40 years will take place in cities, and some two-thirds of people will live there by 2050.

DeFries said that some initiatives aimed at halting deforestation need to be quickly shifted. For instance, some policies that focus on getting small landowners to conserve forests – a popular mechanism among governments and non-profits at the moment – "may not be all that productive without a focus on large-scale clearing as well," she said. "Governments will have to look at policies that intensify yields on existing high-yield fields-not clear more land," she said.

The other authors of the study are Columbia University ecologist Maria Uriarte; ecologist Thomas Rudel of Rutgers University; and Matthew Hansen of South Dakota State University.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

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04 February 2010

BIODIVERSITY: The Amazon Is Not Eternal

The Amazon jungle "is very close to a tipping point," and if destruction continues, it could shrink to one third of its original size in just 65 years, warns Thomas Lovejoy, world-renowned tropical biologist

By Stephen Leahy* | InterPress Service | Feb 2, 2010

Urban encroachment on the Amazon (Credit:Public domain)

Climate change, deforestation and fire are the drivers of this potential Amazonian apocalypse, according to Lovejoy, biodiversity chair at the Washington DC-based Heinz Centre for Science, Economics and the Environment, and chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank.

Lovejoy laid out the scenario for participants at the Biodiversity Science Policy Conference in Paris last week, sponsored by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), and marking the beginning of the U.N.'s International Year of Biodiversity.

"The World Bank released a study that finally put the impacts of climate change, deforestation and fires together. The tipping point for the Amazon is 20 percent deforestation," and that is "a scary result," Lovejoy told Tierramérica in an interview.

The study, "Assessment of the Risk of Amazon Dieback," released Jan. 22, drew on the expertise of several international research institutions, including Japan's Meteorological Research Institute, Britain's Exeter University, Brazil's Centre for Weather Forecasting and Climate Change (CPET/INPE), Germany's Potsdam Institute and Earth3000.

The results and analysis were reviewed by an international blue-ribbon panel of scientists.

Lovejoy, head of the committee responsible for this major scientific investigation, said the Amazon has already lost 17 to 18 percent of its forests. Furthermore, "it has a remarkable hydrogeological system where the forest generates at least half of its own rainfall."

This literally means the rainforest makes its own rain, but it also brings rainfall to many areas outside of the Amazon, including the central-western Brazilian state of Mato Grosso and northern Argentina, he said.

What the study shows for the first time is the combination of global warming on a path to reach two degrees Celsius, deforestation of roughly 20 percent of the original forest, and forest fires that undermine the Amazon's unique hydrogeological system.

The Amazonian south and southeast will receive much less rainfall. Less moisture means those areas will be more prone to fires, which not only destroy the forest but also further dry out the surrounding forest - all of which reduces the Amazon's ability to produce rain. The process becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

"The forest eventually converts to cerrado (the Brazilian savanna) after a lot of fire, human misery, loss of biodiversity and emission of carbon into the atmosphere," said Lovejoy.

The Earth's average temperature has already warmed 0.8 degrees Celsius since the pre-industrial era. At the 15th Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Copenhagen in December, virtually all countries agreed that the warming must not surpass two degrees.

The report's conclusion: "For the Amazon as a whole, the remaining tropical forest will shrink to about three-quarters of its original area by 2025 and further to about only one-third of its original extension by 2075 as a result of these combined impacts of climate change, deforestation, and fire."

"The good news is that deforested areas can be reforested and provide a safety margin," said Lovejoy, maintaining some optimism.

It is estimated that a single hectare of Amazon rainforest contains about 900 tonnes of living plants, including more than 750 types of trees and 1,500 other plants, the report notes.

A single pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe's rivers, and more than 2,000 species of fish have been identified in the Amazon Basin - more species than in the entire Atlantic Ocean.

The Andes mountain range and the Amazon jungle are home to more than half of the world's species of flora and fauna. For example, one in five of all birds in the world can be found there.

Sadly, before the end of this century many, and perhaps most, of those species will become extinct. After millions of years of existence many plants, insects, birds, animals will never be seen again on the Earth. Habitat loss and climate change will be the biggest reasons for their extinction.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conservatively estimates that 30 percent of all species will be extinct by the end of this century, if global warming is not kept below two degrees.

Other experts, such as eminent Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson, told participants at the UNESCO conference that extinctions could go as high as 50 percent.

"Our purpose this year is to focus the world's attention on the need to stop the destruction of biodiversity, the destruction of nature," Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, said in the opening address of the conference in Paris.

The countries party to the Convention agreed in 1990 to slow the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. "We will not meet that goal," Djoghlaf told Tierramérica.

However, with the launch of the International Year of Biodiversity, and the many events, celebrations and conferences to be held around the world, Djoghlaf hopes biodiversity, which is another term for nature, will garner interest and support from the public and policy makers.

With the theme "Biodiversity is life. Biodiversity is our life," organisers are launching a largely educational effort to explain that plants, animals, insects, birds, and bacteria make up the world's ecosystems, which provide humanity with food, fibre and clean water and air.

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, "60 percent of the world's ecosystems are degraded and failing. We have an obligation to change our ways. This is not a luxury," Djoghlaf said.

In October, the 193 countries that have signed the Convention will set new biodiversity reduction targets at a conference in Nagoya, Japan.

The failure to achieve the 2010 targets for protecting biodiversity resulted from countries' inability to define how they would reach them, Djoghlaf said.

He is confident that, having learned from these mistakes, countries will set specific national goals to curb species loss, with comprehensive plans on how to achieve them. That will then feed into a global target for 2020.

"We will have studies, reports and scientific indicators to guide us, but in the end it is up to policy makers to set targets and policies that will make it happen," said the biodiversity chief.

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) (END)

Copyright © 2010 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

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21 January 2010

The War Against Nature Resumes

By George Monbiot | The Guardian in CounterCurrents.org | 19 January, 2010

There's a story that almost all of us believe: that beyond a certain state of development, we relearn a respect for nature. It is true that some of the excesses of the early modern age - attempts by gamekeepers to kill all competing species, mass slaughter by white hunters in the colonies, the grubbing up of hedgerows and ancient woodlands - have lessened, though we still eat endangered fish and buy timber from clear-cut rainforest. It is also true that we give more money to conservation projects and spend more time watching wildlife films than we have ever done before. But as soon as we perceive that our economic interests are threatened, our war against nature resumes.

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity. The Welsh assembly is celebrating the occasion by launching a project toexterminate the badger. I won't pretend that this story ranks alongside the catastrophe in Haiti or the meltdown in Afghanistan, but it casts an interesting light on humanity's continuing impulse to conquer nature, and shows how, even when cloaked in the language of science, our relations with the natural world are still governed by irrationality and superstition.

Last week the Welsh rural affairs minister, Elin Jones, announced what her government calls "a proactive non-selective badger cull" in west Wales. What this means is the elimination of the species, beginning when the cubs emerge from their burrows in May. Badgers carry the bacterium which causes bovine tuberculosis. The purpose of the experiment is to discover whether the number of cows with the disease is reduced when the badger is exterminated. It it works, the method might be applied elsewhere. But even before the experiment begins, I can tell you that it's a waste of time and money.

In 2007, after nine years of research, the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB sent its final report to the UK government. It discovered that "badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB in Britain". Rather than suppressing the disease, killing badgers appears to spread it.

The researchers had killed badgers across 30 areas, each of 100 square kilometres. They found that when the badgers were culled in response to local outbreaks of TB, the slaughter "increased, rather than reduced" the incidence of the disease in cattle: the level of infection rose by some 20%. When badgers were killed proactively (culled annually, regardless of whether cattle were infected), the incidence of TB inside the killing zone was reduced by 23% - but the incidence outside increased by 25%. The reason is that the killing changes the behaviour of the badgers: they travel more and mix more, either to escape the slaughter or to investigate the ecological space it opens up. The economic costs of proactive culling, the study found, were 40 times greater than the benefits.

But the old reflex dies hard. As the scientific group pointed out, "agricultural and veterinary leaders continue to believe, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, that the main approach to cattle TB control must involve some form of badger population control". It noted "considerable reluctance to accept and embrace scientific findings". The Welsh government shares this reluctance. In announcing her extermination policy last week, Elin Jones claimed that the cull would be conducted according to "the requirements outlined by the Independent Scientific Group". But the ISG couldn't have made itself clearer: badger culling of any kind won't work. Instead, governments should do more to control the way that cattle are kept, tested and moved. This was a message that farmers and the Welsh government didn't want to hear.

The policy Elin Jones announced last week is even worse than this suggests. Her culling experiment is actually testing two variables: exterminating badgers and better management of cattle. Yet there are no experimental controls (study areas in which one or both methods are not being tried), so there is no means of telling which of the two measures is working, or whether changes in the incidence of the disease have anything to do with the experiment. There's a scientific term for a study that simultaneously tests two variables while using no controls: worthless. The Welsh experiment has nothing to do with science and everything to do with appeasing farmers.

The Farmers' Union of Wales has been furiously demanding that time and money should be wasted in this fashion. It has lobbied the assembly government for a scheme that will damage its members' interests and alienate the people who buy their milk and butter and cheese. It appears to be impervious to evidence or reason: last week it announced that"badger culling works. Any talk about farming practices being a significant factor are unfounded."

But even if extermination did work, the effect could be sustained only by killing any badgers that re-entered the area: in other words, rendering the species extinct there. Were the same approach to be rolled out across a wider area (the policy the experiment is designed to test), the badger would have to become extinct not only across that zone, but also in all neighbouring zones. Because badgers will move into areas from which the species has been erased, the only logical outcome of this approach is to exterminate the badger throughout the United Kingdom. As this is politically unacceptable, the Welsh experiment is pointless as well as worthless.

This exercise in wilful stupidity betrays an approach to the natural world that has scarcely altered since the dark ages. We still act as if we have been granted dominion over it. Those with an economic interest seem to regard any species that might compete or conflict with them as a threat not only to their income but also to their power. They still treat the natural world as fungible: nothing is too precious, too great a source of wonder and delight to liquidate. There appears to be no point of regret beyond which we won't venture, no lesson in ecological collapse that we are prepared to learn. The Christian worldview, which places humankind at the apex of creation, is hard to shake, even in the most secular nation on earth.

All industries strive not only towards monopoly but also towards monoculture: domination of the natural or cultural landscape. This is what George Orwell meant when he remarked that "the logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle". Industry, if left unchecked, tolerates no deviance. It seeks to shrink both the range of human experience and the wonders of the natural world until they fit into the container it has made for them.

We could lose badgers and - except for those of us who spend summer evenings watching them as they shuffle out of their setts - suffer few tangible losses. But the urge to destroy them springs from the same pathological instinct for power which would deprive us of almost everything.

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order andCaptive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at www.monbiot.com

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

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14 January 2010

Oil Dependence Is a Dangerous Habit

America imported 4 million barrels of oil a day—or 1.5 billion barrels per year—from “dangerous or unstable” countries in 2008 at a cost of about $150 billion. CAP’s Rebecca Lefton and Daniel J. Weiss examine the implications of our growing energy insecurity in this repost.

Climate Progress | January 14, 2010

A recent report on the November 2009 U.S. trade deficit found that rising oil imports widened our deficit, increasing the gap between our imports and exports. This is but one example that our economic recovery and long-term growth is inexorably linked to our reliance on foreign oil. The United States is spending approximately $1 billion a day overseas on oil instead of investing the funds at home, where our economy sorely needs it. Burning oil that exacerbates global warming also poses serious threats to our national security and the world’s security. For these reasons we need to kick the oil addiction by investing in clean-energy reform to reduce oil demand, while taking steps to curb global warming.

In 2008 the United States imported oil from 10 countries currently on the State Department’s Travel Warning List, which lists countries that have “long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable.” These nations include Algeria, Chad, Colombia, theDemocratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Our reliance on oil from these countries could have serious implications for our national security, economy, and environment.

Oil imports fuel “dangerous or unstable” governments

The United States imported 4 million barrels of oil a day—or 1.5 billion barrels per year—from “dangerous or unstable” countries in 2008 at a cost of about $150 billion. This estimate excludes Venezuela, which is not on the State Department’s “dangerous or unstable” list but has maintained a distinctly anti-American foreign and energy policy. Venezuela is one of the top five oil exporters to the United States, and we imported 435 million barrels of oil from them in 2008.

As a major contributor to the global demand for oil the United States is paying to finance and sustain unfriendly regimes. Our demand drives up oil prices on the global market, which oftentimes benefits oil-producing nations that don’t sell to us. The Center for American Progress finds in “Securing America’s Future: Enhancing Our National Security by Reducing oil Dependence and Environmental Damage,” that “because of this, anti-Western nations such as Iran—with whom the United States by law cannot trade or buy oil—benefit regardless of who the end buyer of the fuel is.”

Further, the regimes and elites that economically benefit from rich energy resources rarely share oil revenues with their people, which worsens economic disparity in the countries and at times creates resource-driven tension and crises. The State Department cites oil-related violence in particular as a danger in Nigeria, where more than 54 national oil workers or businesspeople have been kidnapped at oil-related facilities and other infrastructure since January 2008. Attacks by insurgents on the U.S. military and civilians continue to be a danger inIraq.

Our oil dependence will also be increasingly harder and more dangerous to satisfy. In 2008 the United States consumed 23 percent of the world’s petroleum, 57 percent of which was imported. Yet the United States holds less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves. Roughly 40 percent of our imports came from Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, but we can’t continue relying on these allies. The majority of Canada’s oil lies in tar sands, a very dirty fuel, and Mexico’s main oil fields are projected dry up within a decade. Without reducing our dependence on oil we’ll be forced to increasingly look to more antagonistic and volatile countries that pose direct threats to our national security.

Climate change is a major threat to U.S. and world security

Meanwhile, America’s voracious oil appetite continues to contribute to another growing national security concern: climate change. Burning oil is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and therefore a major driver of climate change, which if left unchecked could have very serious security global implications. Burning oil imported from “dangerous or unstable” countries alone released 640.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is the same as keeping more than 122.5 million passenger vehicles on the road.

Recent studies found that the gravest consequences of climate change could threaten to destabilize governments, intensify terrorist actions, and displace hundreds of millions of peopledue to increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, higher incidences of diseases such as malaria, rising sea levels, and food and water shortages.

A 2007 analysis by the Center for American Progress concludes that the geopolitical implications of climate change could include wide-spanning social, political, and environmental consequences such as “destabilizing levels of internal migration” in developing countries and more immigration into the United States. The U.S. military will face increasing pressure to deal with these crises, which will further put our military at risk and require already strapped resources to be sent abroad.

Global warming-induced natural disasters will create emergencies that demand military aid, such as Hurricane Katrina at home and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami abroad. The world’s poor will be put in the most risk, as richer countries are more able to adapt to climate change. Developed countries will be responsible for aid efforts as well as responding to crises from climate-induced mass migration.

Military and intelligence experts alike recognize that global warming poses serious environmental, social, political, and military risks that we must address in the interest of our own defense. The Pentagon is including climate change as a security threat in its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated report that updates Pentagon priorities every four years. The State Department will also incorporate climate change as a national security threat in its Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. And in September the CIA created the Center on Climate Change and National Security to provide guidance to policymakers surrounding the national security impact of global warming.

Leading Iraq and Afghanistan military veterans also advocate climate and clean-energy policies because they understand that such reform is essential to make us safer. Jonathan Powers, an Iraq war veteran and chief operating officer for the Truman National Security Project, said “We recognize that climate change is already affecting destabilized states that have fragile governments. That’s why hundreds of veterans in nearly all 50 states are standing up with Operation Free—because they know that in those fragile states, against those extremist groups, it is our military that is going to have to act.”

The CNA Corporation’s Military Advisory Boarddetermined in 2007 that “Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national security challenges for the United States.” In an update of its 2007 report last year CNA found that climate change, energy dependence, and national security are interlinked challenges.

The report, “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security,” reiterates the finding that fossil fuel dependence is unequivocally compromising our national security. The board concludes, “Overdependence on imported oil—by the U.S. and other nations—tethers America to unstable and hostile regimes, subverts foreign policy goals, and requires the U.S. to stretch its military presence across the globe.”

CNA advises, “Given the national security threats of America’s current energy posture, a major shift in energy policy and practice is required.”

Big Oil is heavily profiting from the status quo

Many major oil companies and their trade association, the American Petroleum Institute, are some of the most vocal opponents of increasing American energy independence and reducing global warming pollution. This is likely because they profit by buying oil from “dangerous or unstable” states. This includes importing oil from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Mauritania, Iraq, Congo, Colombia, Chad, and Algeria.

In 2008 Chevron made a profit of $23.9 billion while nearly half of its imports—138 million barrels of oil—came from these countries. ExxonMobil made $45.2 billion while getting 43 percent of its oil—205.6 million barrels—from these countries. About one-third of BP’s imports—110.6 million barrels—were from these countries in 2008, when the company’s profits were $25.6 billion.

Approximately 25 percent of ConocoPhillips’ imports were from “dangerous or unstable” countries—116.7 million barrels—in 2008, contributing to its $52.7 billion profit. And Shell raked in $31.4 billion that year, also importing one-quarter of its oil—61.8 million barrels—from these countries. (Note: Shell includes Shell Chemical LP, Shell Chemical Yabucoa Inc, Shell US Trading Co, Shell Oil Co, and Shell Oil Co Deer Park).

With that kind of money it’s no wonder Big Oil is doing everything in its power to maintain the status quo. The companies are spending record amounts on lobbying to stop clean-energy and climate legislation. The American Petroleum Institute spent $75.2 million for public relations and advertising in 2008, and in the third quarter of 2009 the oil and gas industry outspent all other sectors lobbying on climate change, with Exxon Mobil leading the pack spending $7.2 million.

Oil companies are also the main source of funding for API’s front group, Energy Citizens, which makes false claims that climate change legislation will be a national energy tax and job killer. In reality, passing clean-energy and pollution reduction legislation will be affordable and even save consumers money while creating a net of 1.7 million jobs.

Clean energy can help bring the economy back to life

The United States has an opportunity right now to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by adopting clean-energy and global warming pollution reduction policies that would spur economic recovery and long-term sustainable growth. With a struggling economy and record unemployment, we need that money invested here to enhance our economic competitiveness. Instead of sending money abroad for oil, investing in clean-energy technology innovation would boost growth and create jobs.

Reducing oil imports through clean-energy reform would reduce money sent overseas for oil, keep more money at home for investments, and cut global warming pollution. A Center for American Progress analysis shows that the clean-energy provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and ACES combined would generate approximately $150 billion per year in new clean-energy investments over the next decade. This government-induced spending will come primarily from the private sector, and the investments would create jobs and help reduce oil dependence.

And by creating the conditions for a strong economic recovery, such as creating more finance for energy retrofits and energy-saving projects and establishing loans for manufacturing low-carbon products, we can give the United States the advantage in the clean-energy race. Investing in a clean-energy economy is the clear path toward re-establishing our economic stability and strengthening our national security.

Download this memo (pdf)

Rebecca Lefton is a Researcher for Progressive Media and Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress.

Special thanks to Winny Chen, Rudy deLeon, and Ken Gude.

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Human civilisation 'will collapse' unless greed culture is stopped, report warns

Human civilisation would “collapse” and efforts to tackle global warming will fail unless the world curbs its culture of greed and excessive consumerism, a report has warned

By Andrew Hough | Telegraph.co.uk | 13 Jan 2010

Consumerism had become a 'powerful driver' for increasing demand for resources, the Worldwatch Institute report said. Photo: GETTY

The world's population is burning through the planet's resources at such a reckless rate – about 28 per cent more last year - it will eventually cause environmental havoc, said the Worldwatch Institute, a US think-tank.

In its annual State of the World 2010 report, it warned any gains from government action on climate change could be wiped out by the cult of consumption and greed unless changes in our lifestyle were made.

Consumerism had become a "powerful driver" for increasing demand for resources and consequent production of waste, with governments, including the British, too readily wanting to promoted it as necessary for job creation and economic well-being.

More than £2.8 trillion of stimulus packages had been poured into economies to pull the world out of the global recession, it found, with only a small amount into green measures.

But the think tank warned that without a "wholesale transformation” of cultural patterns the world would not be able to "prevent the collapse of human civilisation”.

The think tank found that over the past decade consumption of goods and services had risen by 28 per cent to $30.5 trillion (£19bn) - with the world digging up the equivalent of 112 Empire State Buildings of material every day.

The average American consumes more than his or her weight in products each day, many US two year-olds can recognise the McDonald’s “Golden Archers” sign, although they cannot read the letter, and an average western family spends more on their pet than by someone trying to live in Bangladesh.

A cultural shift from consumption to valuing sustainable living was needed because government targets and new technology were not enough to rescue humanity from ecological and social threats.

Without action, humans faced problems including changing climates, obesity epidemics, declines in wildlife, loss of agricultural land and more production of hazardous waste.

Consumerism it said had “taken root in culture upon culture over the past half-century ... (and) become a powerful driver of the inexorable increase in demand for resources and production of waste that marks our age”.

Erik Assadourian, the institute’s project director, said it was “no longer enough to change our light bulbs, we must change our very cultures”.

At current consumption rates, 200 square metres of solar panels a second and 24 wind turbines every hour were needed to be built to satisfy energy levels.

The think tank said it was not just the United States that was guilty of a culture of excess with other developing countries such as Brazil, India and China adopting greed as a success symbol.

China, one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emissions producers, recently overtook the US as the world's top car market.

"More than 6.8 billion human beings are now demanding ever greater quantities of material resources, decimating the world's richest ecosystems, and dumping billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere each year," the report said.

This number will only increase as people in the developing world aspire towards a Western-styled consumer lifestyle.

Mr Assadourian added: “Until we recognise that our environmental problems, from climate change to deforestation to species loss, are driven by unsustainable habits, we will not be able to solve the ecological crises that threaten to wash over civilisation.

“We've seen some encouraging efforts to combat the world's climate crisis in the past few years.

"But making policy and technology changes while keeping cultures centred on consumerism and growth can only go so far.”

He said such measures such as banning incandescent light bulbs and steering children away from consumerism through toy libraries would help.

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13 January 2010

Human expansion leading to 'extinction crisis', UN warns

Human expansion is wiping out species at about 1,000 times the "natural" or "background" rate and something must be done to slow the decline, according to the United Nations

Telegraph.co.uk | 11 Jan 2010

The Secretary-General is expected to argue that world leaders must find effective ways of protecting forests, watersheds, coral reefs and other ecosystems Photo: AP

The UN will launch the International Year of Biodiversity today, warning that the on-going loss of species around the globe will seriously affect the future of humans too.

Dignitaries including UN chief Ban Ki-moon and German premier Angela Merkel will speak at the launch in Berlin.

Mr Ban will say that human expansion is wiping out species at about 1,000 times the "natural" or "background" rate, and that "business as usual is not an option", the BBC reports.

The expansion of human cities, farming and infrastructure is the main reason behind the drop in biodiversity.

The Secretary-General is expected to argue that world leaders must find effective ways of protecting forests, watersheds, coral reefs and other ecosystems.

The UN will say that as natural systems such as forests and wetlands disappear, humanity loses the services they currently provide for free, such as the purification of air and water, protection from extreme weather events and the provision of materials for shelter and fire.

The rate of species loss leads some biologists to say that we are in the middle of the Earth's sixth great extinction, the previous five stemming from natural events as asteroid impacts.

In the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), governments agreed to achieve a "significant reduction" in the rate of biological diversity by 2010.

But despite some regional successes, the target is not going to be met; some analyses suggest that nature loss is accelerating rather than decelerating.

"We are facing an extinction crisis," Jane Smart, director of the biodiversity conservation group with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told the BBC.

"The loss of this beautiful and complex natural diversity that underpins all life on the planet is a serious threat to humankind now and in the future."

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We need new energy governance

Globally, our systems are flawed. Better internationally agreed rules are essential for our economies and environment

Ann Florini | guardian.co.uk | 12 January 2010

Energy lies at the heart of the world's most pressing global challenges. Yet at both global and national levels, energy is poorly governed. Thefiasco of the Copenhagen climate summit is just one illustration of how far the world is from being able to bring about the desperately needed transition to a system of sustainable and secure provision of energy services.

The key role of energy in global problems is clear. Some two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change trace back to fossil fuel use. A renewed scramble for oil is raising fears of a new generation of geopolitical conflicts. Global economic instability correlates strongly with energy-price volatility. Economic development is in significant part defined by the process of overcoming energy poverty, yet 1.6 billion people still lack access to even the most basic energy services.

Only recently has it become clear that these seemingly disparate issues are a collective manifestation of a dysfunctional energy system. Globally and at the national level, energy is still conceptualised and managed in terms of energy sources, not in terms of the energy services these sources provide. Yet consumers have no particular interest in what sources of energy fuel their production, transportation, lighting, heating, air conditioning, or appliances. The existing paradigm serves to rigidify decision-making at a time when extraordinary flexibility and rapid change are essential.

At the global level, a host of intergovernmental organisations is tasked with addressing various pieces of the energy puzzle. Among these, the most conspicuous is the International Energy Agency (IEA). Created by oil consumers in the 1970s in response to the Opec price shocks and embargoes by Arab oil exporters, the IEA has succeeded in establishing and supervising a system of national oil stockpiles, which has helped to prevent a recurrence. With a small but highly competent professional staff, the IEA has also become the primary source for the world's energy statistics and is playing a key role in the climate debate.

But it is nowhere near the truly international organisation that its name implies. The IEA was established by and for a small number of wealthy oil-importing countries, under the aegis of the OECD. Its membership remains restricted to OECD countries, even though surging demand from non-member countries like China and India is rapidly undermining the IEA's ability to speak for, and co-ordinate responses among, oil importers as a group. Although the IEA's mandate has expanded beyond oil since the early 1990s to include broader energy policy, several of its own member governments, led by Germany, found its record on renewables so unsatisfactory that they recently established the International Renewable Energy Agency, whose membership is open to all.

Other key intergovernmental organisations face their own limits. The International Energy Forum, which grew out of a series of meetings of energy ministers, is intended to provide a common forum for fossil-fuel producers and consumers. It has taken some useful steps that may help to stabilise markets, such as the Joint Oil Data Initiative, but it plays a relatively minor role. The Energy Charter treaty has failed to bring Russia into a rule-based framework for international transit via oil and gas pipelines. The World Bank's energy financing remains overwhelmingly dedicated to fossil fuels, despite limited efforts to establish funding for low-carbon energy.

Numerous networks and partnerships have emerged in response to the gaps in global energy governance. For example, the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, founded in the UK, has grown into a multi-stakeholder body supporting renewables and efficiency in numerous countries. So far, however, such initiatives remain quite small. They will not, in the foreseeable future, operate on a scale that can foster a rapid transition away from fossil fuels or provide energy services to billions of new consumers.

As is true of other global problems, a lot depends on the capacity and willingness of the most powerful national governments to act collectively. Yet these countries' deeply flawed systems of national energy governance will make such action all the more challenging.

Indeed, in many ways, the situation has been getting worse. Over the past two decades, advocates of privatisation have promised greater efficiencies and lower energy prices, but the failure to accompany privatisation with appropriate regulation and enforcement has left many countries with poorly governed and often deeply corrupt energy sectors.

Moreover, given the vast profits available under the current system, the struggle to bring about a significant energy transition faces stiff resistance from deeply entrenched vested interests. Market forces alone are unable to cope with major externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions, with overwhelming government control over major energy sources such as oil, and with huge numbers of people too poor to constitute a market.

Our fractured landscape for energy governance was not planned. It has evolved piecemeal, with little co-ordination among its various parts. If we are to avoid paying a high economic, strategic, and environmental price for its shortcomings, a better system of developing and enforcing internationally agreed energy rules is essential.

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US cult of greed is now a global environmental threat

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent | The Guardian | 13 January 2010

The average American consumes more than his or her weight in products each day, fuelling a global culture of excess that is emerging as the biggest threat to the planet, according to a report published today. In its annual report, Worldwatch Institute says the cult of consumption and greed could wipe out any gains from government action on climate change or a shift to a clean energy economy.

Erik Assadourian, the project director who led a team of 35 behind the report, said: "Until we recognise that our environmental problems, from climate change to deforestation to species loss, are driven by unsustainable habits, we will not be able to solve the ecological crises that threaten to wash over civilisation."

The world's population is burning through the planet's resources at a reckless rate, the US thinktank said. In the last decade, consumption of goods and services rose 28% to $30.5tn (£18.8bn).

The consumer culture is no longer a mostly American habit but is spreading across the planet. Over the last 50 years, excess has been adopted as a symbol of success in developing countries from Brazil to India to China, the report said. China this week overtook the US as the world's top car market. It is already the biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

Such trends were not a natural consequence of economic growth, the report said, but the result of deliberate efforts by businesses to win over consumers. Products such as the hamburger – dismissed as an unwholesome food for the poor at the beginning of the 20th century – and bottled water are now commonplace.

The average western family spends more on their pet than is spent by a human in Bangladesh.

The report did note encouraging signs of a shift away from the high spend culture. It said school meals programmes marked greater efforts to encourage healthier eating habits among children. The younger generation was also more aware of their impact on the environment.

There has to be a wholesale transformation of values and attitudes, the report said. At current rates of consumption, the world needs to erect 24 wind turbines an hour to produce enough energy to replace fossil fuel.

"We've seen some encouraging efforts to combat the world's climate crisis in the past few years," said Assadourian. "But making policy and technology changes while keeping cultures centred on consumerism and growth can only go so far.

"If we don't shift our very culture there will be new crises we have to face. Ultimately, consumerism is not going to be viable as the world population grows by 2bn and as more countries grow in economic power."

In the preface to the report, Worldwatch Institute's president, Christopher Flavin, writes: "As the world struggles to recover from the most serious global economic crisis since the Great Depression, we have an unprecedented opportunity to turn away from consumerism. In the end, the human instinct for survival must triumph over the urge to consume at any cost."

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I just took a geography class. Geography is nowadays technically described as a “physical science”. My geography class had a laboratory component. A lab? I haven’t boiled anything in a beaker, over a Bunsen burner, since I was in high school

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Painting: Suzanne Stryk

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Neil O'Brien is Director of Policy Exchange, an independent think tank working for better public services, a stronger society and a more dynamic economy. He writes in a personal capacity

Neil O'Brien | The Telegraph | October 25th, 2011

Riot police guard Debenhams in Peckham

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Oil palm plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia. While palm oil plantations may look 'green' studies have shown a drastic reduction in biodiversity and large carbon emissions due to deforestation.

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Europeans import nearly twice as much carbon dioxide per head as US citizens – but the US still holds the dubious distinction of being the world's largest emitter

by Phil McKenna | New Scientist | 08 March 2010

Lifestyle emissions

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0906974107

© Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Citation: Steven J. Davis and Ken Caldeira. Consumption-based accounting of CO2 Emissions. PNAS. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0906974107.

03 March 2010

All material © copyright 1949–2010 Monthly Review

21 February 2010

Today's environmental pressure groups tend to be pusillanimous, policy-wonking and petrified, says Geoffrey Lean

Easy does it: environment pressure groups have become part of today’s establishment rather than insurgent campaigner

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010

13 February 2010

Environmentalresearchweb, part of the Guardian Environment Network | guardian.co.uk | Thursday 11 February 2010

Forests in Brazil have been cut down to make way for crops such as soya. Photographer: Rodrigo Baleia/Greenpeace

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

04 February 2010

The Amazon jungle "is very close to a tipping point," and if destruction continues, it could shrink to one third of its original size in just 65 years, warns Thomas Lovejoy, world-renowned tropical biologist

Urban encroachment on the Amazon (Credit:Public domain)

(*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.) (END)

21 January 2010

By George Monbiot | The Guardian in CounterCurrents.org | 19 January, 2010

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order andCaptive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Visit his website at www.monbiot.com

© 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited

14 January 2010

Oil imports fuel “dangerous or unstable” governments

Climate change is a major threat to U.S. and world security

Big Oil is heavily profiting from the status quo

Clean energy can help bring the economy back to life

Download this memo (pdf)

Rebecca Lefton is a Researcher for Progressive Media and Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress.

Special thanks to Winny Chen, Rudy deLeon, and Ken Gude.

© 2009 CAP Action

Human civilisation would “collapse” and efforts to tackle global warming will fail unless the world curbs its culture of greed and excessive consumerism, a report has warned

By Andrew Hough | Telegraph.co.uk | 13 Jan 2010

Consumerism had become a 'powerful driver' for increasing demand for resources, the Worldwatch Institute report said. Photo: GETTY

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010

13 January 2010

Human expansion is wiping out species at about 1,000 times the "natural" or "background" rate and something must be done to slow the decline, according to the United Nations

The Secretary-General is expected to argue that world leaders must find effective ways of protecting forests, watersheds, coral reefs and other ecosystems Photo: AP

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010

Globally, our systems are flawed. Better internationally agreed rules are essential for our economies and environment

Ann Florini | guardian.co.uk | 12 January 2010

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent | The Guardian | 13 January 2010

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

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